I'm happiest when I am organizing random projects. In the past few years, it was "Book Club," a group of friends who traveled from Bay Area bar to Bay Area bar tasting the best that there was to try in the artisan cocktail scene.

In the past month or so, the project has been to walk the entire length of Western Avenue in Los Angeles. This straight street is one of the longest north/south streets in Los Angeles, and runs 27 miles through San Pedro, Rancho Palos Verdes, Lomita, Carson, Torrance, Gardena, Inglewood, Baldwin Hills, South Los Angeles, Exposition Park, Koreatown, Hollywood and up to Los Feliz where it ends close to Griffith Park.

I grew up in Southern California near the San Pedro end of Western Avenue, and before this project I hadn't even walked a block on Western. We're 16 miles into the walk, and have 11 to go which will be split into two more walks. It's been super interesting to see the communities that we're traversing, and we're having a blast. I've been taking a photo every 5 minutes along the way, which has turned into the above Flickr album of 91 photos. I've been joined on all three walks thus far by my intrepid cousin Jocelyn, and Kamilah who keeps us entertained the whole way.

Highlights of the walk so far:

A man stopping us to ask, "Are you tourists?" You know all those tourists whose life long dreams are to walk on Western Avenue? I've never met them.

Sergeant Messina of Gardena who took it upon himself to keep us company in his squad car on our rainy day walk in the area.

Let's not mention that this is my first blog post in a couple years, shall we? I'm trying to get back to it. If you miss me, you can find me on Twitter, on Pinterest, on Instagram (@jenmaiser), or on Facebook. I've been writing a lot, though mostly for non-food clients. You can, however, sometimes catch me on Bay Area Bites and Serious Eats.

***

I've moved out of the Bay Area! I'm currently spending a little bit of time with my amazing grandmother in Southern California. The story of the long San Francisco good-bye is a story I'll hold for another day. It was a toughreally toughleap, but I know that it was right, even if I miss some parts of San Francisco desparately.

It's been difficult to explain what the Station Fire looks like visually. Most of the time, fires in Southern California are accompanied by high winds, so the smoke and ash spreads throughout the Southland.

This week, there has been no wind. So the Station Fire smoke is pluming straight up and most days it's looked like a volcano eruption. Other than the fires, the skies are clear blue.

This photo is of the smoke from 40 miles away in San Pedro. The photo hardly does the drama of this justice.

It's been a very busy week for me and my family. We were all in San Pedro together and wanted to eat dinner together, but were dealing with some logistical issues (I needed to get to the airport, my sister needed to drive 60 miles home), so we caravaned from my grandparents house, not totally sure when we were headed. My Aunt Pam called up to the front car, "How about Ante's?" she asked. We all looked at grandma, who has the ultimate say on restaurant choice. She nodded and said, "sounds good!"

Ante's Restaurant is a Croatian restaurant in San Pedro that I have been going to since I was a child. Grandma and grandpa used to take my sister Annie and me and we always felt like it was a special dinner out. Diners sit in high, red leather booths and are served crisp, cold crudites before their main meal. For years, we've used Ante's for family events -- we had a party for my sister's first communion at Ante's and three years ago, we celebrated my grandparents' 60th anniversary there.

Tony Perkov, the Ante's owner, greeted us warmly. "Mrs. Silva," he said sadly and gave my grandmother a hug. My grandfather is sick, which is the reason we were all in San Pedro, and in chatting with Tony it became clear that he had heard the news. A customer had been in a few days earlier and had told Tony about grandpa. San Pedro, despite its proximity to Los Angeles, has an incredibly small town mentality. It was no surprise that he'd heard about grandpa. We reminisced with him about grandpa's restaurant and he brought me an ice-cold martini, and brought the others at the table a liter of red wine.

"To Hank," we all toasted and began our meal.

Grandma, with good reason, has been eating very little for the past couple of weeks. As she settled into her fried chicken dinner, however, you never would have known that she'd had little appetite.

Mom ordered fried shrimp, and the vegetables that came alongside the shrimp seemed to be frozen, pre-fab vegetables, but as we looked closer we realized that they were fresh vegetables cut to look like a frozen mix. They were deliciously comforting, as was the entire meal. Ante's is known for Croatian dishes such as mostaccioli, cabbage rolls and salumi, and comfort foods like pot roast and prime rib.

The food at Ante's is good, but as I reflect upon it, I think that the experience is meaningful to me because it's a part of our family history. Sometimes nothing takes the place of going to a restaurant where you're treated like family and where everyone knows your name.

Do you know Genie at The Inadvertent Gardener? Last June, my friend Kalyn emailed me to say that Genie was moving to the Bay Area from Iowa City, and that she thought we might like each other.

I was in a hurry that day, and didn't think much of shooting an email off to Genie inviting her to a group event that I had planned for the next week. I didn't really think Genie would show -- I probably wouldn't show up to hang out with a group of people where I knew no one. Well, Genie showed up, and she has been showing up ever since.

At some point, a blogger friend asked his wife, "Who is this person named Genie?" The wife answered, "I'm not sure, but I think we need to know her because she seems to be great friends with all our friends now." And it's true. Genie has charmed us all and been a great cohort in our Bay Area adventures.

A testament to Genie's influence, and the general spirit of our group of friends, is that she convinced several of us to participate in the 4 am project this weekend. On April 4, people around the world woke up at 4am and took photos.

At first we all grumbled a bit. "Why can't it be 4 pm?" one asked. We all talked about September 9, 2009 at 9 am being a better fit numerically. But we did it anyway.

And something interesting happened: I learned about the magic of 4 am. I learned that it's a time like no other. Most late night partiers have gone home, and most early birds are not awake yet. It's the quietest hour.

I was visiting some friends last weekend near Paso Robles and Anna asked if I'd like to trek out "about 45 minutes" to see some flowers. I've known Anna since I was fresh out of college, and she and her husband and kids live in San Luis Obispo county.

I was game, and we all crowded into a car to drive a windy road to the wildflowers. I was sitting in the back with the kids (ages 7 and 3) and had to make strange rules for them like "do not put toe funk on me" and "don't get me wet." I won't lie -- it was cramped and I was feeling nauseated by the time we got out of the car nearly an hour and a half later.

But friends, this drive was so worth it.

We went to the Carrizo Plain, which has been a national monument since 2001. The wild weather, the yellow of the wildflowers, and the majesty of the area made for a really fun photo day. If you don't regularly check out my flickr stream, I thought I'd bring the photos to your attention.

The white lake bed that you see in the photos is called Soda Lake and it's a mostly dry, alkali lake that was dramatic to view. Marc of Mental Masala went to the Plain last year and has more photos and explanation of the area on his site.

I left feeling wind weary, happy, and astonished. It amazes me that I have been a Californian my entire life and that really beautiful, vast expanses of the state exist that I have never explored. I can't wait to go back.

I saw Annie Leibovitz speak at City Arts & Lectures on Monday. I have always followed her work closely, but have never seen her speak. And I have a feeling that hearing her speak will be causing a shift in my photography.

Leibovitz was speaking on the occasion of the release of her book: Annie Leibovitz At Work. I haven't bought the book yet, but my understanding is that it's more of a textbook which addresses technique and composition and equipment.

Leibovitz received her professional training at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she began as a painter. She quickly learned that photography was her forte -- it was more immediate and more social.

During the Monday lecture, she read from her book and a portion was about what she learned as a young photography student.

"We were taught that the most important thing a young photographer can do is learn how to see. It wasn’t about the equipment we were using. I don’t remember being taught any technique. A camera was only a box that recorded an image. We learned to compose, to frame, to fill the negative, to fit everything we saw into the camera’s rectangle. We were never to crop our pictures. We went out every morning and took pictures and developed them in the darkroom the same day. Since the prints were washed in communal trays and everybody’s pictures were lying there with everybody else’s, you tried hard to come back with something good. In the evening we would sit around and discuss our work. We were a community of artists."

I had a family member in town this week and had my camera out most of the time -- I shot a couple hundred photos. And I could hear Annie ringing in my ears during my photos. Reminding me to see. Reminding me to shoot an entire image instead of lazily knowing I'd crop later. Reminding me to compose. I am so lucky to have heard her.

If you're interested in hearing this interview, it will be played on KQED on January 4, 2009.

I realize that in my list I said I would do a post a day for 30 days. But friends, I am so dang tired. It's been a very long week, but pretty satisfying in general.

I "had" to go to the San Rafael Farmers Market this morning. I post about Bay Area farmers markets on Serious Eats about once a month, and I realized that I hadn't been to a market in a couple weeks. I needed some fodder for my post this upcoming Monday.

So off I went. I spied these lovely carrots at Marin Roots Farm. I am pretty sure that the carrots on the left are chantenay, but I like to call them Mr. McGregor's carrots.

I hope you can get to a market sometime soon, it's a fantastic time of year to be there.